Harry Potter author fails to make the grade for public vote on the 50 highlights of last half-century
Out of the running … JK Rowling. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
She created the Harry Potter series and has written two bestselling novels for adults but JK Rowling has been snubbed in a competition that pits Scotland's top writers in a public vote to find readers' "favourite Scottish books of the last 50 years".
The author, who lives in Edinburgh, is the highest-profile author to be excluded from the list of 50 books which readers can vote for on the Scottish Book Trust website.
According to literary critic Stuart Kelly, who assembled the list with Scottish Book Trust, Rowling doesn't figure on the list because she just isn't good enough.
"If she was to have been included it probably would have been for the third Harry Potter book, but this list is about adult books," Kelly explained, arguing that "there are 50 better books than The Casual Vacancy on that list".
The list was an attempt to find the "best books for people to choose their favourites from," he continued. "There are a lot of works which expand the novel, books which fundamentally change what a novel does, like Andrew Crumey's Pfitz, Frank Kuppner's A Very Quiet Street, or Hotel World by Ali Smith. It is not just about content, it's also about form. Many of these books are doing quite radical things."
Women writers feature strongly, even though they "haven't been in the past part of the critical discourse", Kelly said, citing Candia McWilliam's A Case of Knives, and The Bad Sister by Emma Tennant, "but they are very much part of the Scottish tradition. They have developed this fascination with dopplegangers."
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The author, who lives in Edinburgh, is the highest-profile author to be excluded from the list of 50 books which readers can vote for on the Scottish Book Trust website.
According to literary critic Stuart Kelly, who assembled the list with Scottish Book Trust, Rowling doesn't figure on the list because she just isn't good enough.
"If she was to have been included it probably would have been for the third Harry Potter book, but this list is about adult books," Kelly explained, arguing that "there are 50 better books than The Casual Vacancy on that list".
The list was an attempt to find the "best books for people to choose their favourites from," he continued. "There are a lot of works which expand the novel, books which fundamentally change what a novel does, like Andrew Crumey's Pfitz, Frank Kuppner's A Very Quiet Street, or Hotel World by Ali Smith. It is not just about content, it's also about form. Many of these books are doing quite radical things."
Women writers feature strongly, even though they "haven't been in the past part of the critical discourse", Kelly said, citing Candia McWilliam's A Case of Knives, and The Bad Sister by Emma Tennant, "but they are very much part of the Scottish tradition. They have developed this fascination with dopplegangers."
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